What only failure can teach us

There isn’t a single person in this world who doesn’t hate failure. Failure is so painful that only mental strength and time can heal it. But as with all painful things, there is quite a bit of goodness associated with failure too. It is unfortunate that most of us don’t look into this goodness that failure provides.

It isn’t easy to accept, but failure is the best teacher we can have. Though there are many other ways of learning, failure consistently tops the list. And here are the top five things that failure helps us with.

1. Know what you don’t know

Often, knowing what we don’t know is the key to success. Many of us fail because we either don’t know how to do something or because we don’t know something that we should know to succeed. Failure exposes this and shows us what we should know to succeed.

2. Understand your limits

The next big thing to succeed is to know what we are capable of and what we are not. Failure, again, clearly shows what our true potential is. It is this lack of self-knowledge that often makes us underestimate or overestimate our own abilities and failure helps us clear it up.

3. Learn what you are not supposed to do

If you are a person like me, who follows the heart more than the head, then failure is a way of telling you that is not for you. I always do things to the best of abilities and if i fail even after trying a few times,I just believe that it is not for me. Perseverance is good, but it needs to be rational. And, I use failure to help rationalise perseverance.

4. Know the path

Sometimes, we may know what we need to do to succeed but may not know the approach to succeed. Failure, though brutal sometimes, shows clearly how not to do things. It is in our hands to learn from that failure and understand how to do things instead.

5. Know where you really belong

Sometimes in life, we do everything to our level best. We know what to achieve and how to achieve it. But we may still fail. That failure may not be because of us but could be because of some other person involved in the same activity. Being social beings we can’t always win by doing things alone and we need people to work together to succeed. Failure, in these cases helps in understanding the group you are associated with is not worth being associated anymore.

Good Luck failing!!

Related posts:

1. Dealing with failure
2. Success is not just luck!
3. Four phases of success
4. A secret recipe to success
5. Staying ahead of the game